Impact of Rankings on SERP CTR

There has been very little original research in the area of position-based clickthrough rates (CTR) in search engine result pages (SERP) and most SEO companies still quote outdated information (http://www.seoresearcher.com/distribution-of-clicks-on-googles-serps-and-eye-tracking-analysis.htm) which may not even be relevant anymore. Dejan SEO team has performed new research in this field in May 2011 and announced the latest findings to the rest of the SEO community. Summary of our research is represented in the SERP CTR heatmap below:

CTR Heatmap

Note: The above figures are separate averages for a range of 50-300 selected phrases for each position and the total does not necessarily need to add up to a 100% value. There are numerous factors which impact CTR values but this goes beyond the scope of our study.

Technical Data:

  • Search Queries: 1,000,000+
  • Ranking Pages: ~200 per position
  • Position Type: Ranking Average
  • Industry: e-Commerce / Retail
  • Search Sources: Google (Worldwide)
  • Domains: Australian (.com.au)
  • Tools: Google Webmaster Tools, Custom Scripts

Related Research

For more detailed study of CTR factors please read the recently published paper by Optify:
http://www.optify.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Changing-Face-oof-SERPS-Organic-CTR.pdf

CTR Data (Table Format):

# CTR
1 43.2 %
2 30.7 %
3 23.3 %
4 19.7 %
5 15.1 %
6 14.3 %
7 11.4 %
8 10.1 %
9 8.9 %
10 8.3 %

Dan Petrovic, the managing director of DEJAN, is Australia’s best-known name in the field of search engine optimisation. Dan is a web author, innovator and a highly regarded search industry event speaker.
ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6886-3211

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4 thoughts on “Impact of Rankings on SERP CTR”

  1. Nouzzy says:

    Hi Dejan, google keywords tool says there is 1 million exact match queries for the 2 words keyword phrase I’m interested in. My site just hit the 2. place few days ago and it’s been on the 3. for weeks. But, I’m getting only about 700-800 daily visitors. According to your research data, it should be much more.
    Yes, on the number 1 spot is absolute brand in that niche, but still, 700 daily from 2. place looks really low.
    I would appreciate your thoughts on this, thanks!

  2. Dan Petrovic says:

    So you should be getting around 30% clicks from the volume of traffic on the first page of results which you say is 1 mil. The only safe way to estimate would be to analyse your search query data from Google Webmaster Tools and figure out your specific average CTR values. We have a tool coming up for that soon but you’re welcome to email us and we can run the analysis for you internally before that.

  3. Anonymous says:

    So you should be getting around 30% clicks from the volume of traffic on the first page of results which you say is 1 mil. The only safe way to estimate would be to analyse your search query data from Google Webmaster Tools and figure out your specific average CTR values. We have a tool coming up for that soon but you’re welcome to email us and we can run the analysis for you internally before that.

  4. Dennis says:

    Would you happen to know the CTR for the Images Results that also appears on the first page of the results?